Connecting Creativitychange and the product will be superseded. I have found that designers
especially are sometimes particularly reluctant to confront this kind of
information; it is unnerving to discover that the market does not affirm one’s
convictions. But a cumulative knowledge of how our customers’ taste develops
and what influences their choice, besides being deeply interesting, is an
invaluable tool in predicting the chances of success for the next season’s
product, and in forming future strategies.
Technological and Technical InnovationI have acknowledged the role of textile developments in launching new
fashions. Fabric research is of fundamental importance to MaxMara.
Innovative textiles, offering for instance enhanced comfort, practicality,
fluidity, lightness, stability, or which allow new techniques of construction,
for example the new generation of ‘double face’ fabric, or can engender new
modes of dressing, for example the recent ‘urban sportswear’ phenomenon
based on luxurious interpretations of high-performance fabrics. Innovative
solutions can and should extend to the entire process of the development
and even the marketing of a product, and we should consider this a critical
aspect of research. Innovation can be the primary reason for a product’s
success.
DesignThe market research, retail, information, fabric and technical research, the
social tensions, ambivalences and ambiguities, the projections of future life,
all that I have mentioned in this essay are transformed first into a drawing,
then a form. This is the core of our work, and it has for me a magic and
mysterious appeal. The sketches, patterns, phototypes, the styling and
accessories are all equally important steps which require great investment. It
is in the transition from bidimensional to tridimensional that we encounter
the crucial artisanal aspect of our business. There is no substitute for the
accumulated experience and craftsmanship of those pattern cutters and
technicians in achieving the delicate balance that validates, authenticates or
qualifies a designed garment. The designer must have an eye for these
subtleties, and an appreciation of the crafts that enables his/her ideas to come
into being.